The Christmas Special Edition - Reflections on 2024

This Christmas special is a reflective journey through the key insights shared in 2024, with highlights from influential conversations on supply chain trends, risk management, and the integration of technology. The episode emphasizes the importance of learning from the past and preparing for future challenges through data, quality control, and innovative practices. 

• Reflecting on the year's significant supply chain insights 
• Bindya Vakil discusses the transition from reactive to proactive strategies 
• Josh Simon emphasizes the importance of credit risk management 
• Addressing quality control issues highlighted by recent recalls 
• Exploring the impact of PFAS on health and the environment 
• The role of AI in transforming supply chain operations and efficiency. 
Insights from Schneider Electric's Madhu Hosadurga

Have a wonderful festive season, and we'll see you in 2025!

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Chapters

• 0:02 Supply Chain Insight and Resilience
• 2:00 Bindiya Vakil CEO Resilinc talks to Tony Hines
• 8:01 Josh Simon talks to Tony Hines
• 10:15 Global Freight Forwarding
• 20:14 Madhu Hosadurga talks to Tony Hines

Transcript

Tony Hines: 0:02

Hello Tony Hines here. Thanks for joining me on the Christmas edition of the Chain Reaction Podcast and thanks for listening. I wish you and your family a great Christmas, wherever you are in the world. Stay safe and think about all those people who perhaps aren't having as happy a time as we are, and let's hope we have a peaceful new year. Now, we've had some great episodes over the past year on the Chain Reaction Podcast and I've put together this short collection in this episode for Christmas which you can listen to. And, of course, if you like any of the particular episodes that you hear in the Christmas episode, then you can always go back and listen to the full episode of that particular show. So I'd encourage you to do that. I hope you all have a great Christmas and that everything out there is looking great, and it's a time for family, isn't it? It's a time when the family come round, or you go round and see the family, and I always think it's a good reconnection. It's time to reconnect. So have a great Christmas and I'll see you in the new year. We'll be in 2025, of course, won't we? And gosh, doesn't time fly, especially in supply chains? So I'll see you after Christmas.

Tony Hines: 1:16

Enjoy the episode. Well, in this Christmas edition, I'm going to pick out some of my favourite episodes from 2024, where I was speaking to people and getting their insights about how they saw particular aspects of the supply chain. So I hope you'll enjoy that too, and I might even take a look back at some of the previous years, just where there have been interesting snippets at times. So sit back, relax and enjoy the program. Well, early on in 2024, I had the pleasure to talk to Bindya Vakil and she came along and spoke to us about five megatrends in supply chain, and I just want to remind you about what she said about those megatrends. So here's a snippet and, if you like the sound of the episode, it's still available on Chain Reaction so you can go back and listen to the full episode. Bindya, of course, is CEO of Resilinc, based in California, but I say based, but of course operating in many countries around the world.

Bindiya Vakil CEO Resilinc: 2:37

Background in semiconductor and high tech, and so I always felt like I was playing that game called whack-a-mole right, where you kind of some crisis pops up and you are chasing, always reacting to it. Yeah, and I did my master's in supply chain at MIT where I really got immersed in the whole space of supply chain risk and resiliency in 2005.

Tony Hines: 3:00

As we got into our discussion, bindi told me about her time at Cisco, where she worked with a team and put together a mapping exercise to track where the goods came from around the globe, and this was the embryonic idea, I suppose, for Resilinc. Listen to what she says. It's very interesting.

Bindiya Vakil CEO Resilinc: 3:21

Because we realized that we don't really know where our parts came from around the world, especially because a lot of our procurement had been outsourced.

Bindiya Vakil CEO Resilinc: 3:31

And so I spent three, four years after that mapping it out for our 1,500 suppliers, our 44,000 plus parts to about 35 countries that were involved in our manufacturing across the world, multiple tiers deep, and I saw us go from being very reactive to actually being able to anticipate where the next disruption might come from, sometimes months ahead of time. And then we had 10 things we can do when you know it early to bypass the worst impact. And I said boy, every company in the world today, whether they realize it or not, they have a global supply chain, but they look for expensive mitigation strategies like holding inventory or reshoring factories when data can make a massive financial impact to improving their resilience. But the challenge was getting to that data. It requires a lot of influencing of suppliers, collaboration, building trust, and I felt like I had learned a lot about how to do it successfully, and so I started Resolink to help other companies kind of embrace this type of practice.

Tony Hines: 4:41

Replacing inventory with data is a really good idea of practice.

Bindiya Vakil CEO Resilinc: 4:46

Replacing inventory with data is a really good idea, exactly because, really, I mean we say, oh yeah, let's ditch JIT, and now we'll suddenly look at, just in case, inventory. But that's not even economically viable, and now, you know, interest rates are so high that companies can't afford to hold those kinds of inventories. So data, on the other hand, and influencing suppliers, building strong partnerships, creating that environment of transparency and trust, that's like simple change in how we operate on a daily basis. And there's no incremental cost to it. That is hundreds of millions of dollars and it gets you resiliency for just about any type of disruption, whether it's a pandemic. This year there are five earthquakes, 10 hurricanes, some factory fires thrown in in the middle, you know, transportation or logistics issue. I mean, there are, you know, 50 different ways in which supply chains get disrupted every year. So inventory in this place might not help with the disruption in that place, right?

Tony Hines: 5:48

That's it, isn't it? As you say, there's always something in supply chains. If it's not one thing, it's something else. These things just jump about, and once we've got experience of doing something, we'll learn from the past, don't we? And we bring our reflexive attitude into the situation.

Bindiya Vakil CEO Resilinc: 6:04

Yeah, what you said is really important. Actually, tony, it's the muscle memory right of 10 factory fires. Your team knows where to go, how to engage with suppliers, who is doing what. What tools are in place. The early warning system has been implemented so that when the big disruption happens, you're not suddenly reacting and scrambling on that one.

Tony Hines: 6:28

And we couldn't continue our discussion could we without saying something about artificial intelligence, ai and machine learning?

Bindiya Vakil CEO Resilinc: 6:36

It's very exciting.

Bindiya Vakil CEO Resilinc: 6:38

I mean you know the way I would characterize it is that the world of supply chains is. You see that acceleration in the frequency with which we get hit by supply chain disruptions. Right A few years ago we might alert our customers about 70, 80 extreme weather type events a year. Last year it was more than 300, 400. So we're seeing across the board disruptions are increasing. The type and number of disruptions in countries all are increasing. So we have to have access to new technologies, data and the ability to process all of that quickly and get to answers without having to put a lot of humans in the process to do it all manually.

Tony Hines: 7:27

Well, we went on in our discussion to discuss five megatrends impacting supply chains, and if you want to go and listen to the full episode after listening to this Christmas edition, I'd recommend you do that and find out more about those megatrends. I had a fabulous discussion with Bindia and it's well worth listening to. Now, in June, we took a look at credit risk management with Josh Simon from JAS Worldwide. Josh has over 30 years experience and expertise in the industry, and it's important because if you can't get your money in, then no point in having a supply chain without the customer paying, and so measuring the risk of new customers, new suppliers, is a very important art, and it's something that doesn't come easily or overnight. It's not something you can absorb through the atmosphere. You need skill and you need experience to gather critical intelligence. So nobody better than Josh to tell us about how global freight forwarders juggle operations and in one of the biggest companies, jas worldwide. They operate in 100 countries worldwide, and here's what Josh told us, with some of the insights he brought to the episode in June.

Tony Hines: 9:01

When it comes to thinking about supply chains, we don't very often think about the money flows, but of course, that's an important part of supply chain management. We have to make sure that customers pay on time, and we have to find out if there are any problems behind what's going on for a delay in payment. And, of course, before we even start dealing with anybody, we have to know about credit risk and we have to decide on whether to go with a particular company or not. So we have all those particular aspects that we have to think about. Now. I wanted to find out a bit more about how this actually works, so I headed off to Atlanta to speak to Josh Simon, and he is the Global Risk and Receivables Director at JAS Worldwide, and this is what he had to say Hello, josh, thanks for joining us today on the Chain Reaction Podcast. It's a great pleasure to have you along on the show.

Josh Simon JAS Worldwide: 10:00

My pleasure, Tony. Thanks for having me.

Tony Hines: 10:02

Now, josh, you've got a lot of experience in this area, and I think you've spent over three decades or so working on credit risk and accounts receivable, so can you tell us a little bit about your experience and your background?

Josh Simon JAS Worldwide: 10:15

To start out, prior to joining Jazz Worldwide, I worked for General Electric for 33 years right out of university, worked for General Electric for 33 years right out of university, and most of my roles at GE involved things like receivables management and also project management. And one of the things that I loved about GE was the global reach of the company, and I find it very rewarding and I find it very rewarding, satisfying to accomplish good things all over the world working with people from all over the world.

Tony Hines: 10:52

So tell me, Josh, how do you come to find yourself now at Jazz Worldwide? Perhaps you could tell us about that.

Josh Simon JAS Worldwide: 10:58

Absolutely so. Three years ago I was recruited by Jazz because Jazz, being a freight forwarder, has been experiencing and enjoying a lot of growth and therefore our CFO believed that some changes were needed to accommodate the fact that we're becoming a larger company. Jazz is becoming a larger company and becoming more global than it already was, and it already was considerably global, but that's just accelerating. So I was recruited to become the global risk and receivables director, so moved into that role three years ago, into that role three years ago, and that is mainly what my role has been, although fairly recently my role has also expanded to also include being the PMO or lead project manager for finance, and I find a lot of overlap and commonality between receivables management and project management.

Tony Hines: 12:06

Yeah, I saw that. I saw that you were in PMO as well, so that's really interesting, isn't it? And it does overlap very nicely. As you say, thinking about, perhaps in a little bit more detail, about credit risk and how you manage accounts receivable, what would you say are the key things you have to keep an eye on on a daily basis?

Josh Simon JAS Worldwide: 12:34

Definitely. Well, it is important and that's a really great question because it's important to have good measurements or metrics. I see a lot of comparisons between receivables management and, let's say, any sport you want to choose. They're very data rich, there's a lot of statistics and you need to know if you're winning or losing at any given time. And you can't know if you're winning or losing unless you're keeping score. So I would say one of the foundational pillars to any world-class receivables management organization is having good reporting with metrics, to know how things are going, are things getting better, are they getting worse? So that is very important needs to be looked at quite frequently. Some metrics should be looked at daily. Some can be less frequent than that. So that's one big thing. It's very important to make good credit decisions and I have a feeling we'll be getting deeper into that in a moment decisions and I have a feeling we'll be getting deeper into that in a moment Because if one makes bad credit decisions, no matter how rigorous one is with receivables management, a very fundamentally bad decision upfront cannot be overcome, typically with a great work, ethic and rigor towards receivables management.

Josh Simon JAS Worldwide: 13:47

So that is important and maybe I could go on. But the only other thing I would add for now is I also think it is useful for any medium to large enterprise to be able to somehow codify the status of invoices. In other words, it's one thing if a customer owes your company, your employer, money, to have a paragraph of what is going on, but it's important to have some way to amalgamate that data, to say, and have general categories. Just one example a very common reason why a customer might pay slowly is perhaps the customer honestly believes there's something wrong with the invoice, that the service provider made a mistake. It is good to know that. It is good for any business to know to what degree are mistakes that we are making adversely impacting our AR. So I think those are some of the very key foundational elements of successful receivables management.

Tony Hines: 14:53

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right, josh. Particular episode Managing Credit Risk in Global Freight Forwarding with Josh Simon from JAS Worldwide. That was published on June 18th in 2024. Well, you might remember some of the episodes that came your way in 24, and this was quite an important episode. It captures the year really. In one sense. It's all about quality and all the problems with quality over the past year.

Tony Hines: 15:37

Here's an excerpt from that program and you can still go back and pick this one up and have a good listen. Well, this week it struck me that in the past few weeks, months, we've had a number of incidents for recalls of vehicles Tesla in the United States, ford Stellantis and so in the car industry, lots of recalls All to do with quality issues on the vehicle. Week or two we've had the Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft which is also experiencing quality issues with the bolts on a door where that door fell off on the Alaska Airlines plane. But on follow-up checks there are other instances of loose bolts on the plane. Now that doesn't sound good and it struck me we haven't done a program about quality for some time, but it might be. We haven't done a programme about quality for some time, but it might be worth reminding people about the importance of quality and what we learnt in the past about how to improve quality. It seems timely to do that, and perhaps the folks at Boeing want to take a listen, and perhaps the folks at the car companies Stellantis, tesla and others also want to take a listen. But no one should be complacent when it comes to quality, and that's the message. So let's relearn the past. And so if you want to relearn the past also and I think you probably should then go and have a listen to the program on quality It'll just act as a timely reminder, as we enter 25, about some of the things we ought to be focusing on that we might have lost a little bit of sharpness and attention to detail. So detail's important.

Tony Hines: 17:31

As you know, back in January on the 31st to be precise we took a look at the dangers of PFAS, health risks, environmental impact and the fight for accountability. Could your raincoat be a health hazard? That was a question we asked as we peeled back the layers on the silent infiltrators known as PFAS, the forever chemicals stealthily embedded in our daily essentials. Well, it's not something we think about every day, but it's something we probably touch, see ingest every day. These are what's known as forever chemicals PFAS, pfos and they're little talked about, but they're in our water supply, they're in our clothing, they're in our kitchens, in containers and in pots, pans. Anything that's non-stick contain these forever chemicals. And why are they called forever chemicals? Well, they just don't go away Once they're in our body. They remain there and they can do all kinds of damage to vital organs. They can cause disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, thyroid problems, cancers. So we're going to explore what suppliers have to do to ensure that they are not breaking not just the law, but breaking our lives by supplying chemicals which they know to be problematic in the products that they supply. So stick around and find out more. Pfas stands for per and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

Tony Hines: 19:30

So if you want to find out more about this particular topic, stop by and pick up that episode.

Tony Hines: 19:35

I'm sure you'll enjoy the episode and I'm sure you'll find out things, perhaps, that you didn't know previously, which is always a good thing, isn't it? Now, on the 20th of November, the episode published on that date was Transforming Supply Chains with AI, artificial Intelligence, and we had a great conversation and insights from Snyder Electrics' Madhu Hosadurga, and I'll let you hear a brief episode from that particular episode and I'm sure you'll want to go and have a look at that one in more detail if you're interested in AI and how it's impacting global supply chains. And how it's impacting global supply chains.

Tony Hines: 20:19

Snyder Electric is a global industrial technology leader, specializing in electrification, automation and digitization. The company provides products and solutions for various sectors, including smart industries, resilient infrastructure, data centers, intelligent buildings and homes, and I'll let Madhu say more about his role, and he can tell you a little bit more about the company in the introduction. So, without further ado, it's my great pleasure to welcome Madhu Hosadarga to the Chain Reaction podcast. Chain Reaction. Hello, madhu, great to have you on the show today. Can you tell me a little bit about your role at Schneider Electric and perhaps, for the listeners out there, you can say a little bit more about Schneider Electric and what they do?

Madhu Hosadurga: 21:01

First a quick introduction of myself. My name is Madhu Harsadurka. I've been in the AI sector for close to 22 years now, started my career with General Electric, spent about six years with them, helping them in the Six Sigma manufacturing quality, and then I moved to a company called Wipro Technologies, spent eight years with them helping various Fortune 500 companies, and then I started in fact fact.

Madhu Hosadurga: 21:31

I went to do my mba at oxford, took a break, came back, started my own startup called oxalytics, which I ran for about four years and I did not have a great success.

Madhu Hosadurga: 21:43

So I ended up joining schneider right after that in the capacity of uh head of ai for what we call as global supply chain function within Schneider Electric, and then, after serving in that role for about three years, I moved on to my current role, which is called as AI Hub. Now, within that, I play the role of head of AI for internal offers and, as the name suggests, I head a function which leverage AI for our efficiency within the company, employee experience and customer satisfaction. So this is my overall experience and current role at Schneider.

Tony Hines: 22:27

Thanks, Madhu. Can you tell us a little bit about Schneider too?

Madhu Hosadurga: 22:31

Okay, I'll quickly tell about what Schneider Electric is into. I'll quickly tell about what Schneider Electric is into. Schneider Electric, as you may already know or have heard, is a leader in two main sectors One is what we call as energy management, and the globe with one of the very complex supply chain. So that is also a 150-year-old, one of the reputed companies.

Tony Hines: 23:11

Yeah, I mean I'd done some background research and I was surprised to see how old that Snyder actually is, because you don't think about it. And then I checked on a few things. And when you talk about energy products and so on, I even have some of those products in my house here. So I am aware of you know, but it's the unseen path, isn't it? We don't see them. It's all kinds of stuff around really.

Madhu Hosadurga: 23:34

So it's all kinds of stuff around really. Yeah, in fact, schneider, while people may not necessarily recognize the name, but it's actually a mix of many brands. For example, many people may use the products like APC and they may not necessarily know it belongs to Schneider Electric and they may not necessarily know it belongs to Schneider Electric. So, for example, even in India we have products under the brand Luminous, which is one of the very local popular brands, again part of Schneider Electric. Many people may not know. So it's a company which has many brands within itself. So, yeah, that's the nature of the company brands within itself. So, yeah, that's the nature of the company.

Tony Hines: 24:16

Yeah, and if we go back to the idea of some of the projects that you're working on currently in your particular role with Schneider, I mean, I read about some of the sustainability work that's happening and some of the stuff to do with how AI is helping with ESG and that kind of thing how AI is helping with ESG and that kind of thing but I think your particular interests are going to be in some other aspects of what's going on at Schneider, so perhaps you can explore some of those with me.

Madhu Hosadurga: 24:46

The one top problem or challenge which I'm trying to solve in my current role is, of course, efficiency. See, the reason is, schneider is a very large organization, a complex organization, so it's very important for us to keep a tab on our efficiency. And that is the problem me, in my role as AI vice president for internal offers, trying to solve. Vice president for internal offers trying to solve, if I have to give you an example, uh, you know, we sell about 400 000 products across the globe. Uh, you know, produced across 220 factories distributed across 100 different international dcs. Is a very complex operation, and then the efficiency of our supply chain, of course, depends on how much inventory we carry at any point in time in different locations. So this is a very complex problem. It's not something humans can solve it with simple processors and IT systems. This is one of the problem we solve using AI.

Madhu Hosadurga: 25:59

Right, so we use you know optimization techniques, using machine learning, to recommend how much to stock in which location at any point in time. Right, Not only finished goods, also the raw materials which go into it. So that is one problem. Not only finished goods, also the raw materials which go into it. So that is one problem. Similarly, we also leverage AI for things like to forecast demand at any point in time, which product how much?

Madhu Hosadurga: 26:31

to produce, how much to stock, and then we also optimize our production scheduling. For example, when you have 220 factories, each one of them hundreds of production lines within it, and now you really have to, on a daily basis, plan those production schedules, and then each of those production lines need to have the right amount of raw material workforce. And all of that, imagine, you know humanly trying to plan this.

Madhu Hosadurga: 27:02

It's not possible. And even if it's possible, it will never be efficient and optimal. This is another example of the problems we try to solve using AI.

Tony Hines: 27:23

Well, that's all we've got time for right now. I hope that's given you a good flavour of some of the great episodes we've had throughout 2024. And there are lots of episodes. We do about two episodes every week and I suggest you stop by on the chain reaction site and have a look around at those episodes that interest you. We also have the weekly news roundup that tells you all about things happening in global supply chains, or impacting global supply chains, in that week, and we'll be back in 2025 with more exciting episodes and, of course, the news roundup and, of course, lots of guest interviews on the program. So have a really great seasonal break and I look forward to seeing you in 2025 and I hope it's a great year for you. I hope it just gets better and better. So that's it for today. Hope you've you. I hope it just gets better and better. So that's it for today. Hope you've enjoyed the episode, hope you found it useful and I'll see you next time in the Chain Reaction Podcast.

Bindiya Vakil CEO Resilinc: 28:24

Bye for now you've been listening to the chain reaction podcast written, presented and produced by tony hines.